查看文章

Universities & Left Review 6 Spring 1959 important decisions, Mills asserts, are made without public debate. Indeed, there are no real forms for such a debate. In the US, formal democratic machinery exists, but it is increasingly relegated to what Mills calls the middle levels of society. Here," countervailing powers", made up of strata which either have never made or were defeated in their bids for top power, contend over secondary issues of policy. They exist only on the periphery of real power, and, where they do touch the core, are increasingly integrated into the expanding apparatus of the state. There is nothing to connect the lower and middle levels of society with the top levels of decision. Political struggles tend to be replaced by administrative decisions.